Justice Legal Group

★ Annulments

Annulments aren’t as prevalent as they used to be in New Mexico. However, New Mexico does have some law providing people direction on how to proceed with an annulment. The history of annulments arose from more of a religious background. Many people, for religious reasons, sought an annulling of their marriage in order to remain in good standing with their church. Many churches would take actions to banish or punish people for getting divorced.

Today, annulments aren’t used as much. The real use of an annulment is based on whether the marriage is actually illegal. Here is how it plays out in real life. A person marries another. Unfortunately, the spouse wasn’t officially divorced at the time the spouse married. This becomes complicated because under New Mexico law a person can’t be married to two people at the same time. Thus, the second marriage becomes illegal under the law. This means that if the illegal marriage needs to be terminated then the parties may seek to annul the illegal marriage. Similarly, and more prevalent in the past, a person who didn’t have the legal capacity to marry (ie: incompetent or a minor) gets married. An annulment was used to terminate the marriage.

An annulment simply means that the marriage “didn’t exist.” It’s still handled similarly to a divorce in that the assets and debts are divided. Moreover, under these circumstances mentioned above a person may still seek a divorce instead. While annulments aren’t used very frequently any longer in New Mexico the laws regarding annulments are still there and can be used if the circumstances are appropriate.